GnR – Chinese Democracy
A review in a word. Tolerable.
This album took… 17 years to come, and for many insatiable Guns N’ Roses fans that have paid attention to Axl Rose over the past 9 years (if and when he was ever on a network somewhere), deep down inside we knew the album was going to be “mediocre” at best, but you never know, he might surprise, right?
Wrong. I’ll give some credit to “Street of Dreams” for igniting some layer of the Use Your Illusion, but only so slightly.
If you’re looking for classic G-n-R, you’re simply not going to get it, no Slash, no Duff, a much older Rose. As a matter of fact, if you’re looking for G-n-R, this isn’t it at all, this is Axl Rose – Chinese Democracy.
Looking at the album as an Axl album, for me, is actually what makes it tolerable. No one in music sounds much like Axl, people try, but they fall short. Granted if you blare this album, chances are you’ll be in the market to replace the shattered windows in your house.
Axl goes through moments sounding Korn-like, Linkin Park-like, and … the some other piece we’ll call “re-inventive experimentation”. Lyrically, its mostly shallow – but he’s a product of the 80’s rock movement, you can’t expect being Phantom-of-the-Opera moved when listening to it. Instrumentally its “okay”, but damn it, Slash is just too damn cool to not *want* to hear.
Maybe it’s just ahead of my time, or perhaps I’m still holding on to the explosion “Welcome to Jungle” caused my youth. My take on it; I can probably re-listen to about half of the album, one song on it grabs my attention (mentioned above) and the others are simply tolerable, at best. Moreover if I’m in the mood for Guns N’ Roses, I’m still turning to Appetite for Destruction.
